We should do fish puns. But let’s not do them just for the halibut. Our puns should have a porpoise. So don’t throw out any crappy old clam that comes down the pike. Let your puns have mussel and sole!

I’ve been wanting to ask for a while now about a term you and the feminist circle in general use a lot “clutching at pearls/pearl clutching”. It enjoys a wider use of course, but that’s where my husband picked it up from. I hadn’t actually heard it before, and he was surprised by my negative reaction to it. He agreed not to use it around me, but pointed out that you and the others he’d seen use it usually inspect your language very carefully. To me the phrase seems unpleasantly gendered, but I seem to be the minority in thinking that. My thoughts are that women are the ones who wear those necklaces, and the image it conjures is of a lady in fine clothes having hysterics over something silly. I was just hoping to get other opinions on why the term is found acceptable in spaces such as this.

You know what this means. A THREE DAY WAITING PERIOD means that, when a woman arrives at an abortion clinic to sign up for an abortion (or whatever the term is for starting the process of terminating a pregnancy), she will have to wait – not a few hours, not 24 hours, but THREE FULL DAYS – before she can get the abortion she needs.

Now that so many abortion clinics have been shut down, most women have to travel to get to the clinics in the first place. The waiting period means that these women also have to pay for hotel rooms – or the cost of traveling back and forth. This puts abortion services completely out of reach for poor women.

In Mississippi, last I heard, there was only a single clinic providing abortion services left in the entire state, and it was in the northeast corner. Don’t quote me on that – I’m going off memory, but this is adequate for illustration. Imagine – a poor woman who lives in southwestern Mississippi discovers she’s pregnant. She’s already living hand to mouth. Somehow, she’s got to scrap together enough money to travel all the way across the state just to get to that sole remaining abortion clinic. Now add to her burden onerous waiting periods – THIS is why so many late-term abortions happen, people! It takes that long for the woman to get the money together just to get there!

@10. Yes, the case of that women is unbelievable. She’s 8 months pregnant and will be killed for ‘apostasy’ right after she gives birth. It’s impossible to wrap one’s head around such despicable barbarism

Yes. Those Islamic bastards live in a different universe. Fortunately, the case is in the mainstream media here in the West. In my experience, the less coverage and attention they get,the better they like it. May give them pause.